Communication is key! Critical to all brands is the way you communicate with your customers.
The challenge common to most marketing departments is how to grow their customer database and how to get and keep those on that database engaged.
In this blog, we are going to:
- Discuss the difference between transactional and marketing comms
- Walk through a Transactional vs Marketing customer journey
- Give useful tips on how to use transactional comms to the advantage of your business.
Transactional Vs Marketing
A transactional email can be sent to anyone on your database that has engaged with your product or services, even though they may have not opted in for marketing.
Here’s an example, Customer A booked a table at their favourite restaurant using an online booking tool and receives an email or text (or both) to confirm their booking reference, the date and time and a thank you.
A day before their booking, they receive a booking reminder.
They attend the booking, have a delicious meal and great service, and receive another email 24 hours later with a link to leave feedback about their visit.
Customer A did not opt in for marketing emails but has received transactional marketing. This is called transactional marketing.
A different customer, let’s call them Customer B had the exact same experience as Customer A, however, Customer B opted into marketing.
A month before Customer B’s birthday, they receive an email from the restaurant offering them a complimentary meal on their birthday if they book a table. Customer B is chuffed, they loved the restaurant and would not hesitate to return especially with a meal on the house. This is called marketing comms.
Advantages of opting-in to marketing
When a customer opts in to marketing emails, this is hugely advantageous to the brand as they are able to ‘keep in touch’ regularly about promotions, news and updates. Customer data is also extremely useful for analysis on marketing campaigns – who is interacting with your brand? Who is clicking through to the last promotion you ran? – let’s retarget them with something more specific to their needs & wants.
The benefits to the customer are that they are likely to receive comms that are more tailored to them and sometimes get a freebie or discount too!
Top tips from Intilery
1. Map out the customer journey
When a customer completes a transaction with you, how many touch points do you have to get them to opt into marketing?
Use clever marketing messages to get them to opt in – an offer or promotion may sway them to opt in. Or if you’re B2B, you can tempt them with useful tips or guides each season.
E.g., If you’re an accountant targeting small business owners, you could do the following:
“We send out regular tips on how to stay tax efficient, subscribe to receive these each month.”
This encourages your customer to opt in as they are seeing value from your brand.
2. Give your customers a choice on how they would like to be contacted
Many customers don’t mind an occasional push notification or an email, some only like a text. By offering more channels of communication means that you’re more likely to receive a new subscriber.
The most common are:
Email
SMS
Post
Push notifications
3. Choose your content wisely
Keep your content relevant, useful, and in-keeping with your brand. Listen to your customers, what do they really want? Offering quality content that is tailored to your customer should lead to a sustained or growing mailing list!
4. Give your customers more options
Let your customers choose the content they would like to receive. If you’re an e-commerce brand and you have a huge catalogue of products, you may want to give your customers the choice on what content they would like to receive.
Do they want to receive emails about homeware? The latest worktop or brass tap? Maybe they only want to receive emails about the technology you stock?
Create a checklist and let your customers opt into their choice of content. This is hugely beneficial to your brand, so you use row conditions to dynamic audiences to really enhance your marketing strategy.
Find out more
Want to find out how Intilery can help you to get more marketing opt-ins? Have a chat with us.
